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› Noxa - Grind Viruses
I got hold of this CD after seeing Noxa live at Tuska Open Air, and to be honest I didn’t expect anything much from it. I really enjoyed the band live but I’m not a huge grindcore fan so I fully expected to be unmoved by the album. I was, however, pleasantly surprised.
As I said, grindcore isn’t my favourite kind of metal, but over the course of reviewing for Headbang I’ve come across loads of bands that I don’t consider to be my sort of thing, but I go on to really enjoy. Noxa are one of those bands.
Just so you know, I’m not going to give you a track by track review of this one, I just don’t have the stamina. This CD has a total of 31 tracks and four bonus videos so if I did, I’d still be reviewing it in three issues time!
They really don’t slow down at any point in the whole album, every song is a full frontal attack on a whole variety of things, from soap operas to suicide, that you can feel the band are really passionate about. There’s no virtuoso guitar playing here, no ten minute solo’s or jazzy time changes, it’s just 45 minutes of raw emotion.
You may think that because they are going full throttle all the time that the songs all sort of merge into each other, and in a way you’d be right. You’d have to really concentrate to be able to say after about 20 minutes of listening to the CD what track you’re on. But in a way, that doesn’t detract from the feeling of the CD, it’s not that much about tracks so much as the album as a whole. These aren’t 31 different pieces of music that you’ll have a few favourites of and not listen to the rest, it’s a full album with progression from one track to the next. I never thought I’d be saying this of an album with 31 tracks but there’s definitely no filler here. It’s almost like one piece of music with 31 different themes that somehow manages to avoid getting repetitive and certainly doesn’t get boring.
I like being surprised by music, it helps me to keep an open mind towards everything I hear, and I would challenge anyone out there who thinks that grindcore is just aimless noise to give Grind Viruses a listen and see if they can’t broaden their musical horizons just a little bit more.
9/10
James Hodgson
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